Real Genius
by Sir Talen
Summary: Geordi finally tells Wesley why nobody likes him.
The fog of transporter sparkles faded away and Wesley looked around the compact interior of the subspace communications relay station. Beside him, Commander LaForge hefted his tool kit and motioned over to a nearby control panel. "Okay, let's start running diagnostics and see what's happening to interfere with the relay."

"Sure, Geor-, sorry, Commander." He followed LaForge and stood behind him while the _Enterprise's_ chief engineer interfaced his tricorder with the relay station's computer system. "Thanks again for letting me come with you."

Geordi turned back to look at him and smile. "No problem, Wes. It's probably going to take me a couple of hours to track this down and repair it. I could use the company and I figured you'd like to get off the bridge for a while."

"Yeah. I mean I know being on the _Enterprise's_ bridge team is important, but it can get really, um…" His voice trailed off, a blush coming to his face as he remembered the Conn station he sat in nowadays had once been Commander LaForge's.

"The word you're looking for is 'boring,' Wes. Why do you think I asked to be transferred down to Engineering? There's always something happening there."

"Yeah," Wesley agreed, relieved that he wasn't offended. Out of all the _Enterprise's_ command team, Commander LaForge was the closest of them to his own age, even if the separation was still about ten years. "It's not just that though. Sometimes I wonder what I'm even doing up there. I mean, it's the bridge of the _**Enterprise**_. There are some ensigns that would throw me out the airlock for the chance to be at my station."

Geordi tapped a few commands into his tricorder and the station's control panel began blinking in response. "You're there because Captain Picard thinks you can do the job. Besides, it's probably safer for all of us that you're up on the bridge instead of down near the warp core."

Stung, Wesley hunched his shoulders and muttered, "I said I was sorry about that force field thing. It's not like everyone else wasn't acting weird at the time." After a moment he added reluctantly, "The nanites were my fault though."

"It all worked out, Wesley," Geordi said. He snapped the tricorder shut. "We've got a fault in the secondary plasma conduit that causing interference in the comm system's subspace waveguides. Hand me the hydrospanner and we can check it out."

"Okay." He pulled the tool out and handed it to Geordi, who clambered up an access ladder and stuck his head into a jeffries tube. "I think the trouble is that I'm a kid. If I was as old as you, nobody would be wondering what I was doing there."

Geordi pulled his head back out to look down on Wesley with his VISOR. "That's not the only reason some people resent you, Wes."

He rolled his eyes. "I can't help it if I'm smart too."

"It's not just that you're smart either."

"What do you mean?"

Geordi thought for a moment. "Okay, here's a theoretical problem for you. You've got a _Galaxy_ class starship which had to release its port nacelle due to a catastrophic warp malfunction, just before it was destroyed. The ship is out of communication range to call for help, you've no shipyard handy, but you just happened to come within range of a _Constellation_ class cruiser with a heavily damaged saucer section, but intact nacelles. How do you get home?"

"Transfer one of the nacelles from the _Constellation_ to the _Galaxy_ after using the remains of the other ship for mass to replicate materials to repair the support wing and fit the new nacelle," Wesley answered automatically. He paused, "Except that won't work because the configuration for a _Constellation's_ nacelle requires keeping its warp envelope inside a range of W+2, which wouldn't be big enough to accommodate a _Galaxy_. No wait, you just dump the first ship's saucer section and fly it home with the battle section." He paused again. "That still wouldn't work. No, what you've have to do is use _both_ the _Constellation's_ nacelles, remove the _Galaxy's_ good nacelle and re-mount it amidships, then recalculate the warp envelope to accommodate the tri-nacelle configuration. You couldn't take her above warp three or so, but it would work. Theoretically."

Geordi looked up from his chronometer. "It took you less than a minute to figure that out, Wes. Wanna guess how long it took me and my lab partner to work out what you just did in your head?"

"Um, not really."

"Two weeks."

"I didn't ask my brain to work this way! I just want to be normal!"

"Well, you're not, Wes. You're a good kid, but you're not normal. And believe me, if there's one constant in the universe, it's that _nobody_ likes a smart ass."


End file.
